


Sisters

by Avia_Isadora



Category: Hand of Isis - Jo Graham
Genre: Gen, Reincarnation, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29497548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avia_Isadora/pseuds/Avia_Isadora
Summary: Iras and Charmian have always been two sides of the same coin.
Kudos: 2





	Sisters

My sister was the soft one. Charmian, not Cleopatra. When we were girls I sometimes despaired of her. Did she think cats wouldn’t catch baby rats? Did she have to weep if her flowers were crushed when there were so many worse ills in the world? 

When we were grown, and instead of games we had policies, I would feel my jaw tighten the moment her eyes began to fill with whatever she was so sensitive about. I wanted to shout, do you not know that there are always poor? That there are always winners and losers? That the suffering of the world will never stop? Your tears and your little white hands will not move the earth one iota.

And yet I loved her, of course. She thought me hard, I suspect. Certainly she thought it unfathomable that I had no lover when she had two. Perhaps she even thought that I loved my nieces and nephews less than she did. I did not. I am simply less demonstrative, less apt to smear someone with kisses, more self-contained. Sometimes, privately and in my own mind, I thought her weaker than I.

It was not until our dying day that I appreciated her strength. She died last. I did not want to. My little sister with her sweet face was steel beneath silver.

In the centuries since then I have never again mistaken her compassion for weakness. I know now what will make her cry to no good purpose. She will weep over things that simply are, and I love her for it, just as she knows I am not uncaring despite my constant sympathy for the devil. I demand no repentance in someone, only a thousand shades of gray, while she expects that every villain will be redeemed. Perhaps they are, in her hands. Perhaps she could walk into Hades’ realm and have the Lord of the Underworld himself eating out of her hands, transformed into benevolent Serapis. She knows I will see the worst and be fascinated by it. She knows I step back from such shadows because of what they will be for me – the inferno will burn for me, and not all stories will have happy endings. And she loves me for it, of course. 

But here is the answer: the truth of things is always somewhere between us. The scales balance. Turn and turn and turn again, we balance. Justice and Mercy are two sides of the same coin, as necessary to one another as inhalation and exhalation. We dance like reflections in a mirror, two girls not quite the same, movements answering one another rather than in unison. I presume she does not know when I guard her tender feelings, but I would not upset her for the world. You see, flowers spring where she steps, and I like flowers.


End file.
